A Slow Return

Monday was supposed to be pretty much of a wash-out with Hurricane Ida, or more likely Tropical Storm Ida, scheduled to roll into the Gulf Coast that day. So when I squinted at the tiny little image of the weather radar on my Blackberry, even before getting out of bed, all I really saw was a whole lot of green. Glancing out the window I could see that it wasn't actually raining, but I figured that between the wind and nearby rain, trying to get in a ride was a bad bet, so I opted for an extra hour's sleep. As it turned out, I'd lost the bet that day, because most of the rain somehow missed us. Ordinarily, missing a Monday ride wouldn't have bothered me a bit, but after three full days off the bike that included two days of ad libitum feeding, I was feeling like a slug and my joints were starting to rust. Just to compound the problem, we went out for a nice dinner at the Maple St. Cafe' that evening for my mother's birthday. I went to sleep early, but determined to ride in the morning come hell or high water.

This morning the alarm never quite went off. My antique clock-radio (red digits, mechanical tuner, and all) had been set on good ol' WTIX. Well, apparently the broadcast antenna for this little fly-by-night oldies station, which is located down in Galliano somewhere, must have gotten knocked off-kilter by the wind because they were essentially off the air. The result? I woke up at about 6:20 for the 6:15 ride. "It's OK," I told myself. A nice solo ride out to meet the group on its way back would be a good way to ease back into riding. Unfortunately, there was neither a group to meet nor any easy riding to be had. The wind was still blowing at 15 to 20 mph when I hit the levee. I looked down at the computer only to have it reach up and slap me right in the face with a 14 mph reading. Obviously, I was going to be making a slow return from my little sojourn in Colorado. So I did my best to get my legs back into the game, with the morning traffic on one side and some remarkably high water on the other. All of the rain up north has really swollen the Mississippi down here lately. The water was covering the batture in many places, and in general was at least five or six feet higher than normal. The only good thing about that is that you get to see a lot more wildlife when it's like that.

I was way out by The Dip when I saw Taylor coming the other way so I turned around to ride back with him. It wasn't a hard decision, since I'd been looking forward to a little tailwind for quite a while by then. I was also far enough out and late enough that I should have already seen the group on its way back, so I figured they had probably bailed out this morning because of the wind. Anyway, I rode back with Taylor listening to him tell his usual jokes (I think he must subscribe to the joke of the week club) and contemplating how caustic his sweat must be to have completely rusted his entire headset. Granted, he was riding his old beater bike. His carbon Trek had cracked and the replacement had just arrived at the shop the day before, so I guess the next time we see him he'll be on shiny a new Trek Madone. It's a good thing carbon fiber doesn't rust!

Tomorrow I am meeting with a small group at Country Day school about starting a cycling team. Should be interesting! Oh, by the way, at the request of USAC, I set up a LAMBRA Facebook page. Facebook is so confusing! So this is a "page" rather than a "group." I'm not exactly sure which is better for this, but I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other since we already have a website and a discussion list. We'll see .....

Up in Colorado

I'm up in Colorado Springs this weekend for the annual USA Cycling Local Associations conference. Since USAC moved out of the Olympic Training Center last year and into their own building, most of the meetings are being held at the nearby Rodeo Hall of Fame. Friday night we had a reception at the new USAC offices, which are much, much nicer than what they had at the OTC. The new place includes a nice indoor training facility for staff, a really impressive collection of photographs on the walls, and a big and conveniently located western bar that occupies part of the building. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep very well because the sudden change to dry air, and perhaps some allergy issues, made it difficult to breathe. I woke up with a pretty good headache. Saturday morning the weather was just beautiful. Kind of cold, but clear and nearly windless. With the morning sun shining on the nearby mountains, I was really wishing I had a bike. It would have been a great day for a ride up to Manitou Springs or something.

We got started bright and early with some of the usual presentations by USAC staff. The one about insurance and liability is always a little bit frightening. We also went through all of the proposed rule changes, after which the Board of Trustees went off to debate them. We ended the meetings with presentations by two chip-timing companies, followed by a reception and dinner. Tomorrow will be similar, with the meeting starting at 8 am. I'll have to head off to the airport around 2:00, by which time I expect I'll be pretty beat. This meeting can be pretty humbling for those of us from the smaller regions. Like last year, there was a lot of talk about cyclocross because so many districts are in the middle of their big 'cross seasons where typical turnouts for single races are running somewhere around the total number of licensed LAMBRA riders. Anyway, it is certainly enlightning to hear about what's happening in the larger districts. Sometimes it makes me feel happy that we don't have quite so many problems to deal with on a daily basis.

Short Week

The Wednesday ride somehow felt harder than usual this week. I think perhaps it has something to do with all that Halloween candy I've been eating. Somehow we ended up with a fair number of little leftover Hershey bars, Skittles, and other tempting products of the modern petrochemical industry. Anyway, the only interesting thing was that there was a film crew working at the Maple Leaf. Somebody told me which movie it probably was, but of course I immediately forgot. The had a big base camp set up near where the ride starts, and as I rolled past I could smell breakfast cooking. Those film crews sure do eat well.

This morning I didn't really know quite what to expect of the ride. The group was pretty long, and right from the start I could see that Rob was going to be pushing the pace a bit. Woody was there on his track bike, so I knew he was still in off-season spin mode, but with a light wind and the temperature in the low 60s, I figured it might get unseasonably fast today. It turned out to be OK, though, at least on the way out. Not slow by any means, but also not blazingly fast either. After the turnaround, the paceline was starting to get little erratic when VJ suddenly sat up. He'd broken a spoke. We were still a long way out, and so most of us waited around so he could stop and deal with the flailing spoke and make sure he'd be able to get home on the wheel, which was something along the lines of a Zip 404, I think. After a quick check, it looked like it would go the distance, so we got going again, but by then a little group was way up the road. The rest of us weren't all that worried about trying to catch them, but pretty soon Mark G. went to the front and took the pace up a couple of notches. That kind of got things going again and after a while we could see we were starting to gain back some of the ground we'd lost. By then the front group had lost a few riders who had turned off to head home, while at the same time our group was getting smaller and smaller. I think we were down to just three for a while, and then Mark left for home, leaving just two, and finally near the there was just me and Ali who had dropped off of the front group. After Ali turned off at the playground, I think there was just Rob up ahead.

So it's a short week for me because tomorrow morning I'm off to Colorado Springs for the USA Cycling Local Associations Conference. It should be interesting. Hopefully none of the more crazy of the proposed rule changes will get past the USCF Board of Trustees. At least the trip there and back will give me a little time to think about getting our LAMBRA meeting together. I've got two delinquent events I'm still trying to get cleared up, one of which was a small NOBC race. I have a feeling I'm going to end up doing the chief referee report myself even though I wasn't even in town for it. That's assuming I can get my hands on the one-day license forms that I was promised would be mailed to me a few days ago. Looks like we're going to have to crack down on the officials and promoters and make sure they don't leave the race site before filling out the forms and writing the check.

November

I can't believe it's November already! I guess I shouldn't complain, though, because the weather around here since Saturday afternoon has been fantastic. It was a little lonely for my Monday morning ride, but today we had a pretty good turnout, even if most of them were a little late. On the plus side, it's not dark any more at 6:15. I can't begin to say how much less stressful that makes the first ten miles of these early morning rides.

For some reason the group was a little slow getting started this morning. I have a feeling it may have had something to do with the Saints game last night. Football fever is running rampant in New Orleans lately. Anyway, the group eventually got its act together this morning and started a nice little paceline. The consensus pace settled in at around 24 mph with most people successfully ignoring the occasional surge by that guy on the track bike.

The ride back, however, soon became quite irregular. There was a bit more of a headwind, and keeping the pace above 23 mph started to take its toll. By the time we were halfway back the paceline was in a continual cycle of disintegration and reconstruction with the speed fluctuating from 21 to 28 mph, and I was finding it difficult to stay smooth. At one point I took what I thought was a nice smooth pull at a reasonable speed, only to discover that I'd opened up a big gap. I eased up and got back into the group when it caught up, only to find that they were then going the same speed I'd been going earlier. Some mornings it's just not worth trying to figure out the pack mentality.

Later, on my way to work, I passed this knocked-over fire hydrant (above) on Lowerline St. It's been leaking water rather badly for the last few weeks and the neighbors have even put up a sign complaining about the complete lack of action on the part of the city. Now it seems they've even taken to decorating it for holidays like Halloween. It's bad enough that city water is pouring completely unchecked out of the ground here, but you would think that a FIRE hydrant might warrant some level of priority in an older neighborhood with old wiring, old gas heating systems and old wooden houses, especially with winter fast approaching. I know from past experience that it only takes about half a day, at best, to repair this kind of leak, even with four guys standing around leaning on shovels and two of them actually working, and maybe another half day to then repair any torn-up asphalt. Somehow the city always seems to stretch that out into a three or four month ordeal for the people who live around there. If you are wondering if the city is back to normal since the hurricane, you need look no farther. We sure could use a Mayor around here, but I can't imagine who in his right mind would be willing to take the job given all of the ass-kissing that would be required just to have half a chance of getting elected, and that's assuming you could get half the electorate to look beyond the color of your skin.

This Weekend

This weekend started out as expected, with a light rain, wet streets, and dropping temperatures. At 5:45 a.m. I turned the alarm off and pulled the covers over my head. At 8 a.m. I finally put my feet on the floor. The rain had stopped, but it was too late. There were things to do and I knew I'd never break free for a ride. One thing about being in New Orleans is that when the streets are wet or the weather is cold, you can always tell yourself that it'll be better tomorrow. It usually is, and Saturday was no exception. It was about 5 p.m. by the time the house was marginally suitable for visitors. I walked out onto the front porch looked out over the street. There were already kids in their Halloween costumes playing around in front of their houses, held barely in check by their parents who were waiting until closer to sunset before letting them loose on the neighborhood. I had a feeling it would be a busy Halloween night, since this year it fell on a Saturday night. Our first visitor of the night was a rather mystified and wide-eyed little girl whose parents had chosen our house for her very first trick-or-treat. I flicked on the porch light and reached into the huge aluminum pot for a handful of candy.

For the first hour or so there was a steady stream of costumed kids climbing the steps to the porch to yell "trick or treat." Some of the neighbors came around to keep us company, along with a few friends who were in the neighborhood and/or on their way to other Halloween night festivities. From all reports, the French Quarter was pretty wild last night. Just when I was starting to wonder if the bulk of the kids were finished for the night, we had another huge surge, and for fifteen minutes or so we were handing out candy as fast as we could to a seemingly nonstop line of kids. One thing I noticed this year was that a lot more of the parents were in costume. I guess it must have been because Halloween fell on a weekend this year. Anyway, things went well, we had a lot of fun, I drank a bit too much wine, and we finally shut things down around 10 p.m. Then, as always happens when I drink a lot of wine, I woke up at about 2 a.m. quite thirsty and then couldn't get back to sleep. The bottom line was that, for me, that extra hour of sleep promised by the shift to daylight savings time was completely squandered.

My original plan for Sunday was to ride part of the Giro Ride, come back early, and then go back out at 10:30 to meet a few people, including some from the newly forming Tulane Cycling Club, for a Tour du Cafe' ride through the city. Well, the weather Sunday morning was just spectacular. Clear blue sky, light wind, temperature around 60F. I rode out to the lakefront, meeting up with Big Richard along the way, and latched onto the end of the smallish Giro group as it headed East. The pace picked up pretty well on Hayne Blvd., but then a small group split off the front when the rest of us eased off because of an approaching ambulance. There was another group behind us that had decided earlier to stick with a 20 mph pace regardless. The rest of us eventually got a decent paceline going, but it was too little too late to catch Brett, Rob, Mike W., and the other one or two who were with them. We all re-grouped after the turnaround, and although it started off slowly, the pace kept gradually rising until we were up to around 29 mph approaching the Goodyear Sign sprint. I ended up making a few hard efforts and generally getting in a good workout, arriving back home around 9:30. That gave me a little time to recover before heading over to PJ's coffee on campus to meet up with the Tour du Cafe' group. I picked up a cup of dark roast to get me going again. [More photos]

We had only five for the 10:30 ride, but since the plan was to keep the pace easy and make a few stops, it wasn't a problem. We rode out to Metairie Cemetery, making a few detours to get around the streets that were blocked off for the Voodoo festival, and did a couple of laps there in honor of All Saints Day before continuing on to the lakefront and then over to the Starbucks in Lakeview where I had a nice Macchiato. From there, it was back to City Park where the big Voodoo Festival was going on, down Bayou St. John to Grand Route St. John and Esplanade to the French Quarter where there were still a few consumed people wandering about from the prior night's festivities. We rode through the French Quarter, teeming with visitors, back toward uptown, stopping for another coffee stop on Magazine Street at Mojo Coffee House. I was standing in line to place my order, trying to decide what to have, when I came face-to-face with a big pecan pie and decided that what I really needed today was definitely another 500 calories of sugar. Considering the size of the slice I was given, it was probably more like 800. Anyway, by then I finally took a good look at my watch and realized it was already almost 1:30 and I had said I'd be home by 1:00. So we headed back uptown, splitting off one by one for home. I ran upstairs, put some clothes on, and we jumped in the car with the neighbors to go look for dead grandparents in the Metairie Cemetery Mausoleum. We weren't even sure which mausoleum they were in, so it was absolutely amazing when we found them within five minutes among the thousands of vaults.

So now, after 90 miles and probably over five hours on the bike that started at 6:30 am, I think I'm finally ready to take a shower . . . . .

Wishing for Daylight

The minute I awoke, I reached for the remote to check the radar. I'd pumped up the tires on the old Pennine - my antique rain bike with full fenders - the night before, just in case. The predicted 50% chance of rain hadn't been particularly helpful, so I figured I'd eliminate one more possible excuse in case it was raining. To be honest, I was kind of hoping there would be a light rain. This time of year I tend to be pretty lazy on the bike unless prodded, so I would have been quite content with a solo ride in the rain. As it turned out, though, there wasn't hardly any rain within radar range, so although it was overcast, grey and quite windy, wet roads were not going to be an issue today.

When I arrived, right on time at 6:15 am, there were just a couple of people there. I wondered if the wind and possibility of rain had scared everyone away. More likely, though, it was just the late sunrise and cloud-enhanced early morning darkness. Within a couple of minutes most of the others arrived and so we headed up the river with maybe ten riders and a nice little tailwind. It didn't take too long for the tailwind to push the speed up past 24 mph, with occasional surges into the 27 mph range. It was hard to tell for sure because it was quite dark for nearly the whole way out, which made for some very sketchy riding. I was hanging back about a bike length farther than normal, just to be on the safe side, the whole time clutching the handlebar and wishing for daylight. It wasn't helping that John's blinky tail light was aimed directly at my retinas the whole time, either. Just as we were approaching The Dip we started to feel just the slightest bit of misting rain, at which point everyone behind me quickly reached a consensus on turning around early. It really wasn't necessary, but the prospect of riding all the way back alone into that headwind made my decision to go with the herd rather easy.

The push back into the wind started out smoothly enough, but the numbers at the front kept dropping as we went. After a while gaps started to open as the yo-yo effect came into play. Situation normal.

Later, on my way to work, I decided to make a quick caffeine stop at Starbucks where I knew the Anniversary Blend would be on tap. Just before I got there I passed a parked car that had *two* boots on it. I don't know how many outstanding tickets you have to have to earn a double boot job from the NOPD, but it's got to cost a bundle of cash to get those suckers off. Somebody was going to be having a bad day for sure. Anyway, I like how the photo makes it look like a San Francisco street!

Arrrrrr!

It was hard getting out the door this morning, but with a warm front out of the Gulf about to back over us and the resulting uncertain weather forecast, I figured I'd better get in the riding while the riding's good. Although the forecast is calling for a high today of nearly 80F, increasing a few more degrees for Thursday and Friday, it was still comfortably cool this morning. I went out into the dark wearing double jerseys and arm-warmers, hoping the levee would be free of morning fog (it was). As we do for most Wednesday morning rides, we had about a dozen on hand for the nice steady out-and-back to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish. Although the pace was reasonably steady, it wasn't easy by any means. Once people got warmed up, the speed was ranging from 24 to 26 mph, so a good workout was had by all.


As we neared the end of today's ride I started craving a cup of coffee, so on the way home I stopped at Zotz where I sat outside for a little while sipping on a cup of dark roast, sweetened extravagantly with turbinado sugar - just the way I like it. The sky was still a bit overcast but both the temperature and humidity were clearly on the rise as I rode back through Carrollton to the house.


Later, on the way to work, I stopped to get a shot of the Halloween pirate propped up on the front porch of one of the houses on Lowerline Street. Then, when I got to the bike rack at the office I noticed a classic AMF Hercules 3-speed from the early 70's that had a big Schwinn Stingray style stick shift grafted onto its top tube. What were they thinking?

Four More

A steady rain kept me under the covers this morning, not that the thought of going out in it anyway didn't cross my mind, however fleetingly. Although I'd done an easy twenty miles or so Monday morning, I was definitely wanting a little more saddle time after having been off the bike so much last week. It was not to be, though, so I turned off the alarm and took the opportunity to nab another hour of sleep. It's been a full week since I got any real exercise, and I'm starting to feel fat and lazy already. Always seems to happen this time of year.

By the time I'd finally rolled out of bed, gotten dressed, checked the email, and made some coffee, the rain had stopped, leaving me with a pleasant enough ride to work on wet streets and under a grey sky. I arrived at the office to find that they were having some sort of serious problem with internet connectivity. I called the "help" desk (I use the term very loosely), and after listening to the recording about my conversation being recorded, and giving the low-level tech person my name, phone number, address, and blood type, he finally told me that "the server is down." It was bullshit, of course, since I could get to our local sites fine and outside websites intermittently. A couple of hours later, things were working again.

My task list was calling today, and luckily the interruption level was low, so between my relatively early arrival at the office and abundant caffeine, I'd checked off a few "task completed" boxes before lunch. By then that two week old cookie I'd eaten for breakfast was long gone and my stomach was growling, so I rode over to Magazine street for a quick chicken pita at Reginelli's, followed by a visit with my dad at Poydras Home. Ten minutes after I'd gotten there some big ominous clouds started rolling in and I made a quick dash back to the office, arriving just as a few sprinkles of rain were starting to fall. Anyway, I'm still feeling kind of snowed with work and unfinished business. Aside from the usual post-travel backup at work, I also need to deal with the annual LAMBRA awards, get the annual business meeting scheduled, try to resolve some delinquent event reports, etc.

It was around 6 pm when the phone rang. It was The Wife reminding me that I had been volunteered to put up some Halloween decorations at the neighbor's house. So I sent off the last email and headed back home. It was still cloudy enough that I turned on my tail light out of an abundance of caution.

The weather around here is getting warmer and more humid by the hour, with rain promised by tomorrow night. It's looking like it will be Saturday before another cool front pushes through and cuts into this humidity. We will be having our usual neighborhood open house on Halloween night, so if you're not too busy, come on over and help us continue the tradition that started on the Halloween after Katrina. It was the first time that everyone on the block was back in their houses and we all ended up out on a neighbor's porch hoping to see a trick-or-treater (there weren't any that year, however).

So there are just four more mornings of darkness before we make the switch back to normal time early Sunday morning. I'm looking forward to that extra month or so without the headlight clamped to the handlebars. Of course, along with the extra light in the morning will come an earlier sunset, and before long I'll be riding home from work in the dark.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Late October is always a time of transition. With one more racing season behind me and the next still just a faint glow on the horizon, I start paying a little attention to all of the other things. For I guess the last twenty years or so, the annual NCURA conference represents the start of the off-season for me. The big four-day conference that deals with a lot of things most people have never heard of somehow always leaves me both tired and energized, reassured that I'm not the only person in the world who worries about all of the complicated things that allow our country's researchers to thrive. When I think about this unique group of people, the phrase that always comes to mind is, "work hard, play hard." I could go on forever about all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes at major research universities in support of the scientific research that keeps us, just barely, ahead. Don't worry. I won't.

What's really interesting, though, is how diverse a group these research administrators are. I'm pretty sure that when the 3rd grade teacher asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, none of them said, "I'd like to be the director of sponsored programs at a major research university." Anyway, I returned yesterday night from four days in D.C. attending sessions with intriguing titles like "Research Development: What is it, who does it, and how can it help increase institutional competitiveness in challenging times?" (I really like that one, by the way!). As usual, I had Hospitality Suite duty for our region, and so the bottom line was that I got back to my hotel room, half a mile from the hotel, between 12:30 and 1:30 am. for three days.

I'm still a little tired, but overall it was a great meeting. On Friday night we had our own in-house band, Soul Source and the No-Cost Extensions, that played from 8:30 until midnight. After a couple of glasses of wine they sound pretty good. After three or four I always end up on the dance floor. I put a bunch of photos on my Kodak gallery site. Keep in mind that the theme for the party was the 70's!

The flight back home on Saturday was a long one and by the time I hit the sack around midnight I was already an unlikely candidate for the Sunday morning Giro Ride. Fortunately, we had organized a little Tulane Cycling Club ride for 9 am, so when I woke up I set my sights on that. We had about a half-dozen riders show up, and since I didn't have a feel for everyone's ability, I figured we'd to the "old" Giro route around Bayou St. John and City Park. Unfortunately, we ran smack into a big charity 5K at City Park and ended up taking a rather bumpy tour of the back streets in order to work our way around it. Under the circumstances, though, it was just the kind of ride I needed today.

Tomorrow, it'll be back to work. I have a very long to-do list right now at work, and a pretty long one for LAMBRA as well, so I'm expecting it to be a very busy week. On top of that, the NCURA conference has got my head filled with all sorts of new ideas. Hopefully I can make some progress with that before I get too bogged down with the usual day-to-day stuff.

Conferencing

The morning temperature was merely in the 50's, but I knew better than to dress for it. Instead, I went out with two jerseys, long tights, skullcap and full gloves. Crazy, perhaps, but definitely comfortable. A month from now I'll likely be comfortable with half those layers, but for now, I just don't see any point in being cold. So anyway, we had a good group of a dozen or so for the Tuesday ride. I tucked comfortably into the long paceline as we cruised up the river, each rider taking nice long steady pulls at the front. My mind, however, was elsewhere, so I was careful to leave a little extra distance between myself and the rider in front of me. This is the time of year when my mind often wanders on these rides. I was thinking about the conference I'd be attending tomorrow up in D.C., the unfinished business sitting on my desk at work, the NOBC winter kit order situation, and the hot double Macchiato that was waiting for me at Zotz, not necessarily in that order.

The ride went smoothly, and by the time I peeled off to glide down the levee onto Oak Street I was comfortably warmed up, my gloves and skullcap tucked into my pocket. I rode down the freshly paved road, swerving smoothly around the sections of granite blocks (a few of which are already getting dislodged), toward that Macchiato. As I rolled up to Zotz, that odd fellow with the limp who I see every morning sweeping the street in front of the Maple Leaf went in to get his morning coffee. I waited patiently and ordered my double espresso with foamed milk on top. The barista seemed rather happy to have something interesting to serve, rather than the usual "small dark roast." I sat for a few minutes, checked my email, and reluctantly headed back down toward reality.

Superdome, Snakebites and Supper

Complete with light show and sound effects, Fall arrived here around 2 am Friday morning. I woke up, watching the pouring rain and listening to the thunder, and easily wrote off any chance of a morning ride. By noon the sky had cleared up and there was a brisk north wind, marking the start of one of those awesome Fall weekends we sometimes get this time of year. When I got up in the dark to ride out to the lake on Saturday the temperature was a good twenty degrees lower and I knew the sudden change would make for a difficult adjustment. Thinking I'd be fine with a chest protector under my jersey and a pair of arm-warmers, I opened the door. That was when I felt the north wind. I turned right around and set off in search of my knee-warmers. Those wonderful knee-warmers. I was glad I'd put them on as I battled my way out to the lake to meet the Giro Ride. My legs were feeling good, but I knew it would likely be a hard ride because of the wind. I was right. The group really got going on Hayne Blvd. People who don't normally get dropped were getting dropped in the crosswind. and it didn't really let up until we came to Chef Highway. That's where things came a little unravelled. With traffic coming in both directions, most riders stopped, but a number of them turned left onto the shoulder of the oncoming lane and kept going until they could cross over to the right side of the road. That opened a big gap (and also pissed off more than a few people). By the time the rest of the group got across the road and reassembled, the wrong-way riders were already a minute down the road and it wasn't likely they'd be caught. We finally got a paceline going, but with the wind like it was the participation at the front was low and inconsistent. Nonetheless, it was a good workout. The ride back was a little less traumatic.

Once back at the parking lot, a few of us went across the street to Kona Cafe (which was pretty busy) for some coffee. Between the caffeine and strong tailwind, I had a really fast ride back home after

Next on the schedule for me was a trip down to the Superdome to see the Tulane game. We knew we'd have to leave around halftime, but since our tickets were free we figured we'd go support the home team. They played a bit better than last week and when we left just before the 3rd quarter started they were trailing Houston by only six points. Apparently things went rapidly downhill from there, because the final score was something like 44 - 6. Ouch. Hope they score better on their GREs and LSATs and MEDCATs, because pro football isn't looking like an option. The reason we'd left early was because we were planning on driving across the lake for one of those murder mystery dinner things at Annadele Plantation in Covington. Now as far as I'm concerned, this sort of audience-participation thing is not really my cup of tea. Aside from interfering with conversation and dinner, they just make me feel kind of uncomfortable. I'm sure it's just me, though, because everyone else seemed to be having a great time. Note to self: Don't sit at the table in the middle of the room next time.

Sunday morning was even colder and more windy than Saturday, and so I added another jersey to my ensemble for the ride out to the lake. After battling the north wind all the way there, I finally hit Lakeshore drive and at 7:04 saw a small group of six or seven heading out. It was a couple of minutes earlier than I'd expect to see the main group, and as I was contemplating whether or not to turn around or continue on, I saw a rider in a full Bicycle World kit come out of Marconi Drive and turn toward West End. So I took off after him, figuring that even if there weren't any other Giro riders, at least I'd have company. By the time I caught him we were down around Canal Blvd. and it was clear that there was nobody else. By then the little group was a good five minutes down the road, so we turned around and I resigned myself to a long ride into the wind. Next time I looked back the other rider had turned off and gone home. Riding alone down Lakeshore Drive, Hayne, and Chef Highway into the wind was hard. It reminded me of those long climbs at Six Gap. For the next ten miles or so, 15 mph was about my top speed, and there were times when I was barely in the double-digits.

Finally, out on Chef Highway near Highway 11, I saw Howard coming toward me. I figured he was out ahead of the group, and a little later I saw the group. I turned around, put it in the big ring, and got in. Now, with a nice tailwind and the shelter of the group, we were rolling pretty fast back toward the service road. When we made the turn off of Chef a few little gaps opened up. I was maybe third wheel behind one of them and we had just picked up the pace to close it up when -- WHACK -- I hit something really big. Immediately, my front tire exploded and the water bottle launched out of my problematic seat post mounted cage. Now I'm going maybe 25 mph with a rapidly deflating front tire, holding a water bottle between one calf and the seat tube. The bottle slipped down to the chainstay where it bounced around on the spokes for a little while before finally falling off. Somehow I didn't go down. I hit the brakes and circled around, picking up the bottle as the last molecules of air hissed out of the tube. The group came back to assist as I took the wheel off and fought with the tube. Since that particular tire hadn't flatted in months, the tube was well stuck to the tire casing, making it a little difficult to remove. About that time someone looked down at my bike and said, "Did you know your rear tire was flat too?" Great! Two snakebite flats. I guess I'm lucky the rim wasn't too badly damaged, considering. Anyway, we finally got everything back together, and the rest of the ride was relatively uneventful. On the plus side, the weather today is spectacular, at least by New Orleans standards. I hope it sticks around for a few more days.

Flash in the Fog

Because of the unusually rainy weather we've been having, I've lately gotten in the habit of checking the radar before even getting out of bed. Since the weather has been warm, the problem hasn't really been so much the "riding on wet roads" part as it's been the task of cleaning up the mess it makes of the bike. Last night I was scraping dried-up worms off of the rear brake and seat tube in an effort to render the bike presentable. So I was relieved to see that the roads were reasonable well dried out this morning as I rode over to meet the group on the levee. The excitement of finally having a nice, clean morning ride began to evaporate, however, as I neared the river and noticed the increasing amount of fog. As often happens this time of year, the only place there was significant fog was along the river. Aside from the visibility problem it presents, especially in the 6:15 a.m. pre-dawn darkness, riding through this kind of fog turns the leading edges of the bike into a virtual dirt collector. I took a flash photo (above) as we started out just to see what it would look like. It's neat how the water droplets in the air create those interesting "orbs." Either that, or there were a lot of ghosts out this morning!

So I rolled up to the meeting spot right on time, but the only other person there was Mignon. As I approached, we both said in unison, "Where is everybody?" I guess the culprit is just the escalating lateness of the sunrise, because a couple of minutes later everyone started to arrive and we finally set out about five minutes later than usual. For the first ten miles or so the fog remained pretty thick and Max remained on the front. At least that eliminated the need for people to rotate off the front until visibility improved. Then, somewhere out past the airport, he picked up the pace a bit. I was sitting third wheel at the time and as both the pace and crosswind began to pick up, I heard someone say something behind. It took a moment for me to safely look back, but when I did, I saw a big gap. Thinking that perhaps someone had flatted, I eased up, and after a little while the two in front did as well. I really don't quite know what happened there, but although most of the group came back together, I think a couple of people got gapped off the back. With Mark G. kind of pushing the pace, we had a fairly good ride out to the turnaround.

The ride back had some tailwind sections, so the pace quickly jumped up to 25 mph or so with occasional surges up to 27 or 29 when Mark would hit the front. Those surges split the pack a couple of times along the way.

On the local front, the President is in town right now for a quick publicity visit. Some people are all excited as if he's a rock star, and others seem to be pissed off because he isn't staying very long. (He actually extended his time in the city in response to that.) Personally, I don't really think it matters whether he's physically here for one hour or four hours. If he wanted to have some serious discussions rather than just photo opportunities and speech time, a couple of days would be a good start and that ain't happening for sure.

NYNY - NOLA (updated photos)

Damn, it was hard getting out of bed this morning. These dark mornings make everything so much more difficult. Even so, I met the 6:15 group up on the levee with plans to cut my ride a bit short. The USS New York was scheduled to leave the Avondale shipyard where it was built at 7:30 and I wanted to join the "line the levee" crowd to see it off. As it turned out, nearly the whole group turned around at The Dip, which got us back to the Huey P. Long bridge right on time. Unfortunately, the ship was nearly an hour late in departing, apparently because they hit the dock and then had to pump in a lot of ballast in order to get the ship low enough to get under the bridge. I rode up and down the levee a couple of times before it finally showed up, and by then there was some moderate fog rolling in. It was after 8:30 am by the time I finally got home. Anyway, it was worth the wait just to see all of the people who came out to wave their flags and be a part of it all. This is the ship that is built with some of the steel salvaged from the World Trade Center Those of us who ride regularly on the levee have been watching this ship being built for two or three years.

Rocktoberfest and the Rain

It was not without some trepidation that, late Saturday evening, I gathered together the truckload of race officiating equipment I'd need to load into the car at 6 am the next morning. I'd spent most of the afternoon at the Superdome watching most of the rather depressing Tulane homecoming football game, and the generic beer, salt pretzels and hotdogs seemed to be still churning in my stomach. The weather forecast, however, might easily have been the more prominent culprit, because it was looking like rain for the 10th annual Rocktoberfest race, and I knew that might just turn the usual confusion into chaos. I downloaded and printed out the pre-registered riders' release forms, made sure I had some big plastic bags, raincoats, and umbrellas. I had already spent some quality time with the camera and had gotten familiar with the screen capture software and settings. The backup camera's batteries were fully charged. The race clock's battery was charged, race numbers were sorted and allocated. By 11 pm things were more or less ready to go, but I had this nagging feeling I'd forgotten something. I would find out what it was early the next morning. During the night I awoke numerous times to the sound of rain pounding on the ground outside. (I would be a lot quieter if I'd get that sagging gutter fixed!) Each time I'd roll over and hope the next time I awoke it would be over. It never was, though.

So I get up a bit after 5 am, brew a little coffee, dress with the expectation of getting wet, and meet Mark at the basement door for 6 am so he can pick up the podium and a few big coolers full of water. We arrive at Shelter #1 promptly at 6 am in complete darkness and a light rain and I immediately realize I've forgotten to bring blank release forms. Crap! Luckily, I had long ago anticipated that one of us would do this and had thirty or forty of them stashed in LAMBRA's Great White Box. So I figure I'll just print some more out before registration really gets going. Robin sets up the generator and I connect the laptop and printer, tell it to print out forty copies, and watch as a single copy comes out before the printer stops, it's little red light blinking in the darkness. When I lift the lid of the printer I can smell cooking electronics and then a little puff of smoke tells me that, once again, I won't have a functional printer for the day. I figure that between the pre-registered release forms that are already on hand and the low turnout I'm expecting because of the weather we'll probably be OK with the release forms on hand, so I leave the registration duties to Laura and go over to set up the finish line. I open the car door and when I put my foot down it sinks into four inches of mud that the weekend's storms have washed into the gutter. Nice! I think to myself, "Maybe we should make Rocktoberfest into a Cyclocross race next year."

Mark, Mignon, and a few others get the pop-up shelter set up, Robin steals a couple of Levee District sandbags to keep it from blowing away, and as the rest of the crew sets up the pylons for the course, I start getting together the usual officiating stuff. We get the big clock, covered in its homemade plastic rain cover, set up under the tent, put up the tripod for the camera, etc. Robin sets up the generator and I fire up the laptop, connect it to the camera, open the video software, and get the manual focus and shutter speed set. The image on the laptop screen looks good. Moments later, the laptop completely freezes. Now, you have to understand that I have spent hours at home connecting this camera and this laptop and testing the video capture setup. It was all working great and I could go back and see the frame-by-frame images from the video clips, and all was well. Now, it refuses to work. I swear, this has to have something to do with the generator power or something. Anyway, after much fiddling around, rebooting, restarting, etc., I finally give up on the video capture and pull out the backup camera, resigned to having to judge any close finishes on the little flip-out LCD screen, but glad that I had anticipated the possibility of electronic meltdown (in the case of the printer -- literally).

It's still raining when we start the first race at 7:30, but the Women and Juniors combined field is small, so I know the problem will be keeping track of lapped riders rather than judging high-speed pack sprints. Shortly after they start the rain turns into a deluge of biblical proportions. The rain is blowing horizontally into the little popup shelter and within minutes we're all pretty well soaked from the waist down. Even with the clipboards inside of clear plastic bags, the paper inside is soon soaked from wet hands and by mid-race I'm trying to score the race on the equivalent of crumpled tissue paper. As the riders come around the Shelter building into the headwind they are barely moving, the faster ones struggling to maintain maybe 12 mph, but they are all determined to finish. In fact, I think we had only one DNF the whole day, and that was due to a mechanical issue. We write up the results and post them, only to find that, since I'm doing everything by hand the old-fashioned way and shuffling multiple pieces of wet paper, I've got the Juniors' names mis-matched with their numbers and we've somehow scored one of them as being two laps down instead of one. The Kona Cafe' folks take pity on us and come out with a carafe of hot coffee.

The next races go progressively better. By the third of the day's five races the rain has stopped and the streets are beginning to dry out. Somehow, nobody has crashed, which was probably at least partly due to the fact that none of the races had more than a dozen riders. The old-style camera with its tape and battery is working fairly well, although it's very awkward and slow to rewind and play back frame by frame using the remote.

Finally, the last race, the Cat. 1/2/3 race, gets underway and it's clear that these guys aren't going to let the low turnout stop them from racing. Kenny goes from the gun and quickly gets a 30-second gap that he holds for a few laps on the windy Lakeshore Drive course. It's up to Diego and Brandon and Charlie and the others to chase. When he's finally caught, another attack goes and they have to chase it down again. When that one comes back, I can see that a few riders are on the ropes. So does Tim, who immediately counter-attacks into the headwind. The pack hesitates to take up the chase and a gap starts to open. I think to myself, "Frank is going to wait until a few of these guys take some hard pulls and then he'll try and bridge." Brandon and Diego get to work at the front. A lap later, Frank sees his opportunity and lauches, quickly making the bridge up to his teammate. Tim and Frank proceed to ride away from the pack which is starting to lose riders out the back door. They come across the finish together, followed by a pack sprint that Brandon (above) wins.

We tear down everything and stuff it all into cars and trucks, Laura handles the awards ceremony, handing out the coveted special-label beer bottles, and we head over to the nearby Kona Cafe' for some food. My feet are still wet at 2:30 when I get home to unload a lot of wet gear into the basement where it will have to dry out for a couple of days before getting packed away for the final time this year. David LaHoste posted some great photos, by the way.

And so the 2009 road season is officially over and my thoughts are turning to coffee rides and winter training and plans, rarely actually realized, of getting to the gym for much-needed and highly boring "core" work. The next few weeks, for me, will probably include most of my usual rides, but generally ridden a bit slower, and then a trip to Washington and another to Colorado and the usual variable November and December weather and holiday complications will start the inevitable fitness slide that annually culminates some time in January with.....

"How the hell did I let this happen again?"

Calm Before the Storm

The difference this morning was the breeze. It was, I suppose, as sign of change. The forecast was warning of rain later in the day and pretty much all day on Saturday. We're holding out hope that Sunday morning's races will go off without too much drama, of course. The way the weather has been around here lately, anything could happen. There were just a few of us for the Friday morning ride and we soon fell into a little paceline, taking long, long pulls at the front until we had to stop to fix a flat somewhere out toward the turnaround. Otherwise it was just a simple little ride from which I arrived home just slightly less sweat-drenched than usual.

So tomorrow I'm supposed to be going to the Superdome for a little Tulane Tailgating prior to the Homecoming football game. I probably attend a football game once every six or seven years, at best, and rarely find the motivation to actually watch one on television. I think the thing I dread the most about football games at the Superdome is the driving and parking. Since there will be others, the sensible approach, riding bikes, isn't really an option. Hopefully I will survive the whole experience and still be able to get my act together for the 5:30 am Sunday morning wake-up call. Of more immediate concern is tomorrow morning's weather and whether I'll be able to make the Giro Ride without getting too wet. I think that unless it's actually raining in the morning I will ride anyway.

Bad Call

Wednesday afternoon was just starting to wind down when the rain started. This wasn't just some little afternoon shower, this was RAIN - the kind that comes down so fast and so hard that the storm drains, even the ones that actually work, are immediately overwhelmed and the water starts getting deep out in the street. "No worries," I thought. These random summer rainstorms that tend to pop up almost without warning don't usually last very long. It was just after 5 pm and The Wife, who was taking the shuttle home from downtown, had wanted me to get home sooner rather than later in order to deliver some food to the husband of a co-worker who was in the hospital. It was still pouring down rain, so I figured I'd give it another fifteen minutes. Half an hour later it was still raining buckets. Finally, shortly before 6 pm, it slacked off to a light drizzle, so I put on my $20 plastic rain jacket and headed off down Broadway for the 2-mile ride home. I was less than half-way there when I realized I might have made a bad call on the rain thing. About three blocks up ahead I could see a curtain of rain. Four blocks later my Weejuns were already starting to fill with water. Soon water was blowing in through the vents in my rain jacket and my slacks were plastered to my legs. At least everything in my Timbik2 messenger bag stayed nice and dry, because nothing else did.

This morning the weather was a repeat of yesterday's. Hot and sticky with a side order of hungry mosquitoes. There were about a dozen for the early ride, including Woody on a freshly built-up track bike. The pace started moderately enough, but as usual it gradually ramped up as the ride went on. There were four or five guys on time trial bikes today. Maybe they are getting in some early training for the next time trial, which I guess will be in March or April?? When Howard surged at the front, taking a couple of riders with him, I just held the consensus speed, which wasn't all that slow anyway, and after a couple more people took their pulls at the "new" front, everyone was back together again. That kind of defined my role for the day - acting as a buffer for the seemingly random accelerations. Even so, it was a good fast ride today.

We're all still hoping for a little cool-down, since it's October, but it's looking like we'll have to wait a few more days at least. The weather for Rocktoberfest, this Sunday, is still a bit uncertain and will all depend on when the next little front decides to come through. A few hours one way or the other could make a big difference.

Another Muggy Morning

The level of humidity this morning was truly impressive, even for New Orleans. Everyone seems to be wandering around in a daze lately, mumbling things like, "when is it going to cool down around here?" The hazy supersaturated air hit me in the face like a stinky wet towel the moment I opened the basement door this morning, and the absence of any detectable breeze just served to intensify that feeling of having all the air suddenly sucked out of your lungs. Of course, once I got rolling everything felt much better and I arrived up on the levee to meet the rest of the usual crew at the usual time for the usual Wednesday ride. It was one of those days when everyone seemed to be on the same page. We took long turns at the front with the speed hovering consistently in the "moderate" zone of 22-24 mph. The only complication being that my glasses were pretty much always coated with a light coating of fog. Or maybe that was my brain. Or both. As we headed out on the ride today a line from an old song kept cycling through my mind:

It's too hot for words;
Why bother with conversation;
Don't let's talk or even walk;
But if you want to make love, okay

Back at home, I need to see if I can figure out how to get the LAMBRA camera working reliably with the laptop. For some reason I've had serious trouble with that the last two times I've tried it, so I think I will have to really spend some time testing it out before Sunday's races.

Elsewhere, with the European road season winding down the French media seem to be struggling to come up with a juicy doping scandal, but the pickings seem to be pretty slim. The interesting part is that they don't seem to be getting the same leaks they used to get from the testing labs. The latest news is about a failed test for CERA from the Giro d' Italia way back in May. Even the AFLD has jumped on board criticizing the UCI for not handling the doping controls the way they want.

Moon and Stars

The moon and stars were still bright in the dark morning sky when I rolled out to meet the early Tuesday levee ride. That meant a clear sky and no chance of rain, which was good. What was less good was the stifling humidity. It may be early October, but you wouldn't have known it from the morning temperature. As we rolled out from the start, someone said, "I hope we don't go too fast through the fog." Fog?? Sure enough, the next five or six miles featured some moderate ground fog that soon rendered my clear glasses nearly opaque. I stuck them into my helmet vents and rode the rest of the ride trying, with limited success, to miss all of the invisible little bugs that were aiming for my unprotected eyes.

There were about a dozen up there today, and with a light tailwind the pace was reasonably fast as we made our way upriver. I guess I finally turned off my front light somewhere around Williams Blvd. As sometimes happens, I dropped back a little too far at one point and got stuck back there behind the rotation as someone farther up kept letting people in ahead of him. It was a pretty long time before I put in the effort to move back up toward the front.

We were approaching the gravel hump out near the Luling bridge when the pace slowed and someone stopped. I was never clear on what the problem was because I just kept rolling slowly up and over the gravel, waiting for the group. Well, it seems the group turned around instead of riding over the gravel like we'd been doing for the last week or so, and when I finally turned around under the bridge the only other rider still coming my way was Chip.

So we had a nice 2-man time trial all the way back into the light headwind, which turned out to have been a pretty good workout. I got home soaking wet from sweat.

To Rocktoberfest is this weekend. Amy has made a new logo which will be pasted to the awards. Those are traditionally bottles of beer for this race. I'll have to play it by ear as to whether or not I'll be able to ride since I'm also the official.

Weekend's End on the Couch

It was a Giro Ride weekend for me and as I left Saturday morning for the ride out to the lakefront I noted how dark it was and how depressing the coincidence of shorter days and the end of the racing season is. The Saturday ride was missing a few of the regular riders because it's the MS Tour for Cure weekend. As often happens this time of year, I was feeling pretty passive on the ride, just happy to follow wheels and stay out of trouble. Things were going along pretty smoothly until just after we got onto that short section of Interstate where the pace always seems to ramp up. I saw Howard dropping back quickly with a flat tire. Someone yelled "Flat!" and I quickly told them to keep going. Having the whole group stop on the side of the interstate would have been a really bad idea. In fact, since Howard's tire still had a bit of air in it, those of us who stopped waited until we were on the off-ramp before stopping to fix it. Then we went through two tubes before getting him rolling again. On the plus side, we then had a nice little group and a smooth paceline to battle the headwind as we rode out on Chef Highway to meet the rest of the group on its way back. The weather was so nice that a few of us hung around the parking lot for a long time afterward. The rest of the day involved a drive to Baton Rouge and back and then a small wine-tasting at the Ecole Bilingue de la NouvelleOrleans sponsored by the little wine shop at University Square (Hopper's) and featuring a few wines from the Rhone valley. In-between, I spent a couple of hours trimming the long row of long-neglected Ligustrum hedges along the side of the house - one of the many things that get pushed aside in favor of road trips to bike races and those long rides in the country. By the time I finished my wimpy little arms and under-developed shoulders were practically dysfunctional.

Sunday morning I turned off the alarm, fell asleep again, and the jumped out of bed at 6:30. By the time I got out the door I had less than twenty minutes to make it to the lakefront without missing the group, so basically I started the day off with a little time trial down Carrollton Avenue. Just after I hit Lakeshore Drive I saw a group coming and knew it was too early since it was only 7:02 and they'd have to have been going about 50 mph to get to Bayou St. John by then. Someone said they didn't think there was anyone else behind, so I went along with them. Of course, an hour later the riders who'd been abandoned finally found us. I don't understand why these guys are in such a rush to leave and don't seem to be able to think about the riders who show up just in time for the 7 am start. Anyway, there was a pretty decent breeze and the ride seemed fairly fast to me today, even though we were still missing a few of the usual riders. There was some rainy weather moving in as we rode back down Lakeshore Drive and looking to the south I figured I was about to get wet. Just about that time we started getting a light drizzle (the stuff they call rain in California) that continued all the way home. It was just enough to get my socks wet by the time I got back.

It's after 5 pm now and for the most part I've been sitting on the couch watching old movies since noon and wondering why my hip still hurts. Outside, it's been raining pretty much nonstop since I got home, but it hasn't been particularly heavy. One of the neighbors and her kid just came over to exchange cookies and soon I'll have to fire up the grill for dinner with the other neighbors.

Change in the Air

It was actually rather chilly this morning when I rode out to the levee. I pulled up the zipper on my jersey and tried to remember where I'd left the arm-warmers last spring. Since they have re-paved Oak Street, I've been taking that route instead of Willow St. lately, even though they have those strategically placed sections of granite cobblestones at many of the intersections. Fortunately, you can ride around them on the edges. Today we weren't very far down the road before Howard flatted, so we kind of started out with a little break. The pace today remained mostly under control on the way out, but on the return trip we picked up an increasing headwind that occasionally dismantled the paceline. Just before the turnaround Jeff stood up to close a little gap and I heard a loud "ping." He'd broken a spoke, of course. Luckily, it was on the front wheel and it didn't go too far out of true, so he was able to ride it the twenty miles or so back to the playground once we tied the broken spoke up so it would stay out of the way.

Everyone who did Six Gap seems to be fully recovered now, although I don't think Pat's or Mignon's times ever showed up on the results page. My guess is that they had dead timing chips. I would have assumed that the chip numbers were inserted into the database by scanning them, thus verifying that they were functional, but I think they were just typing in the numbers at registration. Everyone did, however, get links to their photos. They had six fairly good photos of me, so I bought a couple, even though the "packages" were rather expensive.

I can't believe it's almost the weekend again. Wven worse, there's only one more race on the calendar - Rocktoberfest. We're doing that one back on the Lakefront again for the first time since Katrina, so we're just hoping that a cold front with a strong north wind doesn't blow through the day before.